Disbanding Police Departments

[Rev J]

Since the discussion of defunding police and disbanding police departments came up I decided to do a little research.

First off let's get a couple of definitions out of the way.

Defunding the police means cutting the budget and reallocating the budget to programs that prevent crime and treating the conditions that lead to crime. Not cutting police completely. So instead of expecting police to deal with mental health crisis' they take a portion of the police budget and give it to an emergency psychiatric unit. Instead of arresting and imprisoning drug addicts taking a portion of the budget and putting it into rehabilitation programs etc. Essentially using people who are better qualified for parts of a cops job to do those parts.

Disbanding police departments means essentially taking them down and restructuring them from the ground up. So far there's only 3 cities in the US that have done this Camden, NJ, Baltimore, MD, and Minneapolis, MN.

This led me to do some digging regarding that restructuring, what it meant and crime statistics.

I'm just going to post a few articles on Camden NJ who disbanded their Police Department in 2013 and Baltimore also in 2013.

So the city of Camden disbanded it's Police Department and handed it over to the county.

According to this article the county pretty much doubled the police force and after a rough start is reporting the lowest crime rate in 10 years:

https://www.tapinto.net/towns/camden...er-past-decade

I'm a fan of reading about 3 articles on a subject to get a better picture.

https://www.businessinsider.com/camd...o-story-2020-6

So this is about the downside. While the homicide rate is down other crime is up but the city has also lost 7,000 residents which also skews the percentages. The article also points out certain shifts in income, and ethnic demographics, combined with still rampant police corruption, lack of Section 8 and low income housing.

I should also point out that this was an Op Ed written by resident.

Now for number 3:

https://snjtoday.com/2020/01/07/camd...ew-study-says/

This almost reads like a virtual circle jerk. It does talk about changes in training involving deescalation etc.

The purpose of this thread isn't value judgement "Disbanding is good" or "Disbanding is bad" it is to just look at what it is, what is being done right and what is being done wrong.

Since I'm at work and getting ready to get busy I'll do another post on Baltimore later.

Edit/retraction. I misread something Baltimore hasn't disbanded their police department.
C/S,
Rev J

[Guest]

I'm actually from the Saint Paul which is technically the same city where George Floyd and another guy more recently were killed by police and countless buildings burned to the ground and the national guard called in. There are signs everywhere saying "arrest the police". Minneapolis police fractured my arm and popped it out of socket when I was high and told em I had a gun. So I don't like em. I still think someone needs to be carrying guns and keeping order though.

[Guest]

Yes, I was high and trying to get cops to shoot me. I was being a dipshit, but still, they were a bit rough.

[Rev J]

You obviously didn't check out any of the links that I posted.

I'll break it down in moron terms:

Camden, New Jersey turned its city police department over to the county. The police were no longer employed or governed by the city but were a branch of county law enforcement. It's the same way a lot of small towns in America do it. They carry guns, they enforce the law, it's not "Anarchy", it's not a lack of law enforcement. As a matter of fact in Camden there were actually twice the number of cops after the police force was disbanded.

Along with that they changed the training procedures with and emphasis on deescalation. It's still fucked but it is creeping its way down the list of "Most Dangerous Cities in America."

After making the changes according to the statistics that were recorded most crime went down. It's still up in the air on the causes as gentrification started happening. To quote Chris Rock, "White people moved in next door to me. I said 'Shit, here comes the neighborhood'. You know what those people do to property values?"

Looking at some of your recent posts you are still being a dipshit and trying to get others to harm you. If you were dealt with by an emergency psych professional instead of cops you probably wouldn't have gotten your shit fucked up.

C/S,
Rev J